2017: Best Business SEO Practices

Written by: Jason Bayless | January 09, 2017

SEO is constantly changing. It’s ideal to consistently update your checklist of best practices for SEO. This list offers the best SEO tactics for 2017.

Google Analytics is vital for SEO. Have you heard the saying, “what gets measured, gets improved?” Using Google Analytics allows you to measure the traffic to your website along with other important metrics. KissMetrics has even more features than Google Analytics, yet it has a monthly fee.

Page Load Speed– Consumers these days expect your business to have a fast website. If you don’t have a fast site, consumers will go to your competition. Use Pingdom’s Speed test tool to measure the speed of your website. If it’s too slow, there are various options you can implement. For instance, you can upgrade your website’s hosting. Or you remove some of the pictures, items which can hog memory, from the page that is slow. If those pictures are necessary, you can reduce their size with the appropriate software.

Use Better Blog Titles– Content marketing is essential when it comes to SEO. A good title is key to a good blog post. Why? That’s because most visitors won’t click on a blog post if the title doesn’t interest them. Use the Blog Title Generator software to come up with SEO-appropriate titles.

Backlinks– Getting backlinks from other websites is a valuable technique. It worked in 2007 and it will work in 2017. However, backlinks for the sake of backlinks will damage your site. You need to be smart about it. Google is ready to penalize any webmaster that has artificial, or ostensibly artificial, backlinks. One key point is to never pay for backlinks. It’s best to get them naturally by writing high-quality guest posts. You can also reach out to influencers. You can incentivize them to review your products and link back to your website. Keep in mind that influencers won’t review your products for free, or rather it’s unlikely. So use proper incentives. For example, you can give them an affiliate link, so they get a portion of every sale they inspire. You can also send them free products. Likewise, if you’re on social media (and you should be), you can give them a shout out on your account. The more social media currency (followers and influence) you have, the more appealing this technique is. Lastly, you can always pay them to review a product. All of these tactics will increase your backlinks and improve your SEO strategy.

Images and Infographics– A simple well-written blog post won’t cut it in 2017. You need images and infographics. The good news is that you have a lot of options. You can go to Pixabay and use CC0 images to boost your blog content. These images are free, and all CC0 images are safe to use on your blog posts. That’s amazing. However, infographics are even better than images. They provide more information and are loved by readers. Still, they take more time to create. One option is to outsource your infographics to Fiverr. It will be well worth the investment, as more people stay on your blog posts longer, a fact which Google notices, causing them to bump you up in their SEO rankings.

Content Length– Short blog posts really don’t cut it anymore. The web is exploding with content. Aim for at least 1,000 words with your blogs. As a matter of fact, 1500-2000 words is the ideal number. Blog posts are about quantity over quantity. Your customers and readers will appreciate the effort.

These are six tips that will boost your SEO in 2017. Good SEO, at its heart, is about creating content that people love. Keep that in mind, and you won’t go wrong. However, if you start doing things for search engines, you are bound to be disappointed.